Akira Kurosawa's Dreams

Akira Kurosawa's Dreams is a Japanese film from 1990. Akira Kurosawa's Dreams is exactly what the title tells you. This film is simply one man’s dreams. Dreams he has had over his life. This is film is basically eight short films, with some overlaps in characters and plot. Most of the stories deal with man's relationship with his environment.
A running theme throughout all the stories seemed to be identity. The first story, Sunshine Through The Rain, is about acting against the cultural barrier. The boy acts out against his mother. He is destroying what the world that he was raised with. This ostracizes him from his previous identity. In the second story, The Peach Orchard, the dolls’ culture was put to an end by the boy's family when they destroyed the peach trees. They made the decision to go against their traditions and separate themselves from their culture. With this act, the child is denied a his identity and is forced to live with that now. With Mount Fuji in Red and The Weeping Demon, Akira Kurosawa, depicts the world as a nuclear wasteland. This world is now inhabited by cannibalistic demons. They are now the main people who live on Earth. Kurosawa comes into this world not knowing where he is or why or what now. The identities of mankind have been stolen and now changed into demons. In the last story, Village of the Watermills, a boy is faced with the option of suicide or eternal searching after witnessing the fox wedding. He is left with no choice but to find a new identity. This basically says trying to recreate a new identity is a bad idea. Instead, keeping your original cultural and born identity is necessary in having a strong, meaningful existence.
This film was quite different than most films I’ve seen before. I enjoyed the fact it was very original and very nice to look at. Some of the visuals in this movie are insanely different. The scene with the man going inside Van Gogh’s paintings was incredible. I enjoyed watching the darker dreams the most in this film. The Tunnel and Mount Fiji in Red seemed like very short Twilight Zone episodes. The Tunnel’s story about a man encountering the ghosts of an army platoon he was responsible for killing was intriguing. Why did Akira Kurosawa even have a dream like that? I didn’t enjoy The Weeping Demon because I felt it was a bit redundant after pretty much knowing that was how everything was going to turn out after the nuclear explosions. Crows and Mount Fiji in Red definitely felt like the most realistic dreams for me. Realistic in the sense of Akira Kurosawa actually having those dreams. I’ve had dreams similar to those two in terms of how they looked and what I was experiencing. Some dreams were better than others but that didn’t really stop my enjoyment of the film. Despite whether you liked the film or not, Akira Kurosawa did a very commendable job. The film was very original and I hope to see that people will make more films like this that are daring and creative.